It doesn’t take much to be labelled the resident sportsballs game guy here at NAG. In my case, I once played 14 minutes of football for De Beers Football Club – purely because the Euro 2008 tournament was on the telly, and in my enthusiasm I’d gone out and bought all the kit, and showed up unannounced one evening when I heard they played social football there some nights. The coach reckoned I looked the business, so he gave me a starting position in a match against some men from the Cape Flats with neck tattoos. I’d never played football in my life.
Naturally, I was substituted after 14 minutes of running the wrong way, being endlessly offside, and hoofing the fancy new match ball into a pine forest. The only positive commentary I got was, “Bra, have you ever even played in those boots? They look brand new!” – which I now realise wasn’t positive commentary at all. The upshot of all this is that when EA Sports plops out its yearly sports games, they land on my desk. This time it’s FIFA 19, and I’m secretly delighted, because I’m actually a bit of a fan. And it helps that this year’s entry is startlingly good.
